


it's a little fuzzy

by ashesandhalefire



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-16
Updated: 2012-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-18 18:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhalefire/pseuds/ashesandhalefire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek is dying.</p><p>Sprawled out on the floor of his family home, he rests his head on Stiles’ thigh and takes a shaky breath that barely fills his lungs. The house is ashy and dark, but Stiles can still see everything and it makes him want to claw his eyes out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's a little fuzzy

**Author's Note:**

> My first official foray into writing Teen Wolf fic, and obviously I began with the morbid.
> 
> Cross-posted from tumblr.

Derek is dying.

Sprawled out on the floor of his family home, he rests his head on Stiles’ thigh and takes a shaky breath that barely fills his lungs. The house is ashy and dark, but Stiles can still see everything and it makes him want to claw his eyes out.

“I can’t fix it,” he admits, stroking his hand forward through Derek’s sweat-soaked hair, fingertips trailing over the bumps of his transformed forehead.

Derek gasps, hands reflexively moving to the bullet hole.

“I would if I could,” Stiles swears, “but there’s nothing for me to cut off this time, big guy.”

—

Scott comes through the door with his head bowed, and Stiles isn't sure if he wants him there. Isaac whines from the corner, but Scott comes to Stiles first, crouching behind him and putting hands on his shoulders, and Stiles is suddenly so much sadder. Derek is dying and Scott is here because of Stiles.

“So. How long has this been a thing?”

Stiles’ body jerks with a strange sort of pained laugh, and he licks his lips, shaking his head.

“It was never a thing.”

Derek shifts, eyes squeezing shut, and Stiles keeps playing with his hair. He thinks wistfully that maybe it’s Derek’s way of saying it should have been.

—

By the time Jackson shows up, Stiles is leaning against the broken remains of a couch, Derek pulled against his chest with Stiles’ knees holding him upright. 

The poison is getting closer to his heart, seeping through him as he sleeps, but he seems to relax at the presence of his last beta.

“Why are we here?”

It’s not malicious, though most things that Jackson says sound that way anyway, and Stiles throws his head back with a sigh. His jeans are wet with infected blood.

“Because he shouldn't die alone.”

They could probably shock him back to consciousness. It worked the last time when Stiles landed a sharp punch to his jaw. But Stiles knows there’s no magic bullet walking through the door this time. There’s no help coming. Derek isn't waking up to anything other than his own slow death, so Stiles cradles him in his arms and lets him sleep.

—

Derek’s like a furnace to Stiles most days.

He shivers that night, and Stiles does his best to share his body heat.

—

The infection is all black veins and pale skin and pure ugliness and it makes Stiles think of his mother and her last few days. 

—

The house creaks around them as its final resident begins to leave.

Stiles figures Derek doesn't mind that he’s dying.

Derek doesn't have anything left. 

—

Stiles has a basic timeline in his head of how long Derek has, and when there’s a sudden spike in his temperature with about two hours to go Stiles makes the mistake of allowing himself to hope.

In a manner of minutes Derek is burning up and it’s actually hurting Stiles to touch him, searing his skin. He keeps his hand against Derek’s pulse anyway, and feeling the erratic beats is somehow worse than the pain.

-

It’s dark out and Stiles is supposed to be at home by now. His dad is probably worried. Stiles has bigger problems.

“Hey,” he says softly, and Derek drags his eyes open. Isaac and Jackson stir in the corner, and Stiles imagines that the word sounded like a shout in the quiet. Scott plays with a stray curl on Isaac’s head and has the decency not to look up. “Have you ever kissed a guy?”

For a split second, he looks like pre-death Derek. “No.”

“Me neither.”

Derek’s body convulses and black oozes from the wound in his stomach, seeping into his torn shirt and leaking down his side. Stiles long ago overcame his gag reflex.

“I don’t know if I’m big-picture bi or if it’s a person-specific deal, but I would have liked to be kissed by you.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Derek rasps.

Stiles takes it as a compliment when he leaves it at that.

—

“It’ll be better there,” he says through tears, because he doesn't want to think about this but he wants to lie to Derek less. “Trust me.”

Derek nods. “I do.”

—

Stiles promises himself he’ll forget how Derek whines desperately as the countdown runs out.

He promises Derek other things.

—

Derek is cold and Stiles is numb.

In the corner, Isaac scratches at the floorboards with bloody fingernails and Scott awkwardly pats his back and Jackson pretends like he doesn't feel anything.

—

Stiles walks through his front door with dirt all over his clothes and blisters on his palms. He ignores his father and locks himself in his room.

Isaac is the only reason the police department even lists Derek as a missing person. When he starts living with Scott and doesn't have Stiles to come up with a decent lie, people get suspicious.

—

Nobody asks why Stiles gets a tattoo on his next birthday.

He goes by himself and he takes care of it on his own and nobody blinks an eye. They’re busy trying to figure out what’s happening, because it’s been months since they buried Derek in the forest and still none of them are showing signs of being an alpha. Mostly they’re just relieved that Peter died first, but they’re a disorganized group of bitten betas and they’re an easy target, so Stiles’ tattoo really isn't a priority.

Only his father ever asks to see it, grabbing him by the shoulders and tugging his shirt up when Stiles hesitates to do it himself. If he recognizes the symbol from Derek’s missing person’s profile, he doesn't say anything. Stiles appreciates it.

He figures it’s probably not healthy how desperately he wants to get more. He wants to cover himself with them, bigger and smaller but all exactly the same, until he can’t see his skin anymore, until his blood runs black and he dies a monster that nobody recognizes.

But he figures Derek would be pissed considering all the times they made bargains and traded lives for each other, so he sticks with his one tattoo and goes to pack meetings on Tuesdays and draws spirals on his wrists.

—

Scott doesn't want to be an alpha and Stiles will chew off his own arm before he lets Jackson inherit Derek’s responsibilities, so he sits in Derek’s chair and makes the decisions. Isaac does what he asks without hesitation and Scott is loyal to a fault so Jackson doesn't really have a choice but to listen.

They’re a small and broken group that Derek couldn't fix and Stiles can’t do it either.

But he thinks maybe he can keep them alive as a favor, keeping a promise he made out of desperation.

—

“I don’t know what your deal was with him,” Scott says, and a part of Stiles appreciates his best friend’s consistent lack of tact. “But it’s okay.”

Stiles loves Scott, he really does, but talking about Derek doesn't actually make everything hurt less. Really, it just makes all the wounds fresh because Stiles knows if Derek was still here—and, honestly, that thought alone is enough to make him consider a trip to the tattoo parlor—there wouldn't be all this talking. 

If Derek was sitting here, Stiles wouldn't have to talk about his feelings. Derek wouldn't make him because Derek would know that talking doesn't always help. 

But Derek is dead and buried and not here and Stiles is being forced to talk about his feelings with Scott and it makes his back itch.

“It’s really not,” he says. “But I’m fine.”

—

He asks Isaac.

“Not really,” the boy answers, scratching the back of his neck. “His scent mostly faded after…you know.”

Stiles nods.

“You were actually—”

Stiles looks up.

“For weeks,” Isaac admits. “He was all over you.”

It’s the only time Stiles ever wishes he’d taken the bite.

—

The sheriff finds out about werewolves because Jackson is just as much of an idiot as Stiles always assumed he was, and Stiles has a quiet conversation with him in the living room that begins and ends with Derek.

He catches Stiles by the wrist and looks at the raw skin there, hidden beneath another carefully drawn triskele.

“Hale isn't missing, is he?”

Stiles shakes his head.

“Killed?”

“Hunters.”

“You were involved.” 

Stiles hates himself because it isn't a question.

—

Isaac is the only other one that the loss lingers with. Scott didn't feel it in the first place and it faded from Jackson, but Isaac comes to Stiles’ door and cries.

Stiles takes him to Deaton to get the tattoo on the side of his neck.

—

He goes to the cemetery to visit his mother and pretends like it doesn't bother him that Derek’s body is in an unmarked grave.

“He was an asshole,” Stiles tells her. “I miss him.”

—

Weeks pass before his father comes into his room and sits on the edge of his bed, staring down at the tattoo.

“You and Hale…,” he starts. “You were—”

“Nothing,” Stiles says, and it hurts the most because it’s true.

—

Stiles sees the hunters again one day, parking their sleek black car outside a diner and going for lunch. Instinctively, he reaches for his phone to call Scott or Isaac or even Jackson, but he thinks of the bullets—

_“Stop!” he had screamed, voice embarrassingly hoarse as he pleaded and fought against Isaac’s constricting grip. “Stop! Stop! He’s not—”_

—so instead Stiles gets the baseball bat out of his trunk. 

He smashes the windows and uses his keys to draw a spiral on the hood and doesn't bother to hide his face when a couple across the lot pulls out a phone to call the police.

—

Stiles slouches against the table in the interrogation room.

“I don’t care,” he answers. “I’m not sorry.”

His father says they just want to know why.

“I've done worse for less,” Stiles says.

His father tells him he committed a major crime.

“Because it’s the least I can do. Because they killed him and nobody knows.”

—

The hunters decide not to press charges after they see the drawings on Stiles’ wrists.

He goes to the tattoo parlor and gets them inked there permanently.

—

His father starts to look at him like he isn't sure who Stiles is.

Stiles knows.

He’s a human alpha of a ragtag pack looking for revenge with black vendettas etched in his skin. 

He’d much rather be the Little Red to someone else’s Big Bad Wolf.

—

Isaac is with Stiles the next time he sees the hunters.

They look up from their repaired car with narrowed eyes. Isaac twitches.

His eyes turn red and he grabs Stiles by the back of his neck, pulling him closer as they walk.

The gesture is familiar.

Stiles makes it back to the car before he retches in the street, and he wipes his mouth on his jacket sleeve before smiling bitterly.

“Congratulations.”

—

Isaac makes a good alpha, for Scott and Jackson at least, and Stiles wonders if it will all eventually just fade away.

Derek will be just another name in a file on a desk in a room in a building. He will be an image in a foggy memory in the back of a mind that will eventually slip away. 

Derek is dead and Stiles is alive but wishing he were the same.

—

“You said you and Hale were nothing,” his father accuses. 

Stiles hears it as an accusation. He wishes it was.

Telling his father that it’s the truth doesn't make him feel any better.

—

“I've never seen you like this.”

Stiles knows this one is an accusation because the sheriff glances at the picture of his wife that they keep on the mantle when he says it. 

Telling his father the truth—“I've never felt like this.”— doesn't make him feel any better.

—

Isaac is just as large as Derek was, maybe even taller, but he’s lean in places Derek wasn't. He slips into Stiles’ bed one night and pulls him against his side, and Stiles feels warmth pool in places that it hasn't in a while.

“The pack is worried about you,” he says. 

Stiles doesn't believe him.

“You take care of your pack.”

“I miss him,” he finally says. “I didn't even know I liked him. And I miss him more than I thought you could miss somebody that you didn't like.”

Isaac presses his lips to Stiles’ temple.

“Maybe you liked him more than you thought.”

—

They find him the night of a horrible storm, crouched over the unmarked resting place. Mud coats his arms, and he struggles in vain to push away the water settling in the hole left by the collapsing grave.

Isaac pulls him back by one shoulder, Scott at the other.

“I’m supposed to save him when he drowns,” Stiles screams, and they barely hear him over the wind and rain. He’s hysterical and he knows it, and he probably won’t be able to look any of them in the eye after this. “I couldn't just _leave him_ —”

—

He locks himself in his room for a day and emerges as pre-death Stiles with a few extra tattoos.

Nobody believes him, but they welcome the change.

He thinks of the wolf he never got to love and hopes he’s with Laura.


End file.
